This week’s featured book, It Looked Like Spilt Milkallowed us to imagine various shapes while looking at clouds.We spied with our little eyes rabbits, birds, trees, ice cream cones & more. Sophia P. told us she spied a big ant cloud while lying on a blanket outside her home.

We followed up the reading of cloud books with activities including painting white clouds & decorating with cotton balls “It Looked Like Spilt Milk” pictures. We also soaked up water with cotton balls then squeezed out the water with our fingers to watch it rain. This activity helped strengthen our fine motor skills. Then we played with shaving cream! We swirled & squished, made letters & shapes & had some messy fun!

Additional activities we enjoyed this week included making clouds with white play dough, white pompoms, white pipe cleaners & white gemstones; playing with our box creations; sand table with sea shells; water table to practice scooping & pouring; dramatic play in the kitchen area as well as singing & dancing during morning meeting.

This week’s featured book, Not a Stick starred a small pig who showed that our imaginations can go as far we allow. A fishing rod, dragon-taming sword, horse & paintbrush, among others allowed us to believe in the possibilities of endless play with a simple stick. We followed up the reading of this book with activities including painting & decorating our “not a sticks” & completing “not a stick” pictures.

Ms. Sarah also helped us make stick soup. We all contributed our own special ingredients to the soup:

Ms. Sarah then added some salt & pepper while Miss Gillian added a little love. We mixed it all together and…Ms. Sarah stated, “This soup tastes gross!” I wouldn’t recommend making this soup at home.

Additional activities we enjoyed this week included rainbow tree transient art using sticks, pom poms & gemstones, Tinkertoys & Lincoln Logs, playing with our box creations, sand table with shells, water table with ocean creatures & dramatic play in the kitchen area as well as singing & dancing during morning meeting. We also learned to keep a beat with rhythm sticks. It was quite loud but lots of fun! Wooden spoons make great rhythm sticks for the children to use & YouTube has some wonderful rhythm stick activities. You can try this at home (after inserting ear plugs).

We celebrated Caiden’s 4th birthday on Thursday. His mom & dad joined us to sing Happy Birthday & share some yummy munchkins. Caiden’s mom also distributed bubbles as a party favor to all of our Thursday campers. Caiden chose to read Ladybug’s Birthday (Steve Metzger) for his birthday book.

Have you ever given a young child a present & have them more focused on the box rather than what was inside? Well, we had boxes galore fill up our classroom.

After reading the book Not a Box, we gave the children carte blanche to decorate boxes & use them for anything they wished. They colored with markers & crayons, pushed friends across the room in large boxes, hid inside boxes, popped out of boxes & much more. The creativity & attention to detail was astounding. We had robots, boats, airplanes & more. The children were asking when they could play with the boxes as soon as they walked into camp.

Thank you to Sophia & her mom for lending us the book How Many Bugs in a Box. After reading the story we estimated how many children we could fit in the large boxes, then we all climbed into the box. We had 7 children standing in 1 large box. Sitting, however, was a different story. We couldn’t fit quite as many children while sitting in the box.

Speaking of sitting in boxes, Sitting in my Box is a story about a little boy sitting in a box reading a book when various animals knock on the box to join him. It became awfully crowded in his box. Our children enjoyed re-enacting the story with a box full of the same animals featured in the book. We also re-told a story about Ms. Sheri reading a book when along came (insert name) who knocked on the box. The giggles were abundant as the children climbed into the box one by one.

Additional activities we enjoyed this week included sand table with shells, water table with ocean creatures, dramatic play in the kitchen area, puzzles & play dough as well as singing & dancing during morning meeting.